Reflective Report

My name is Eva Montoya Prades and I’m from Spain. I was studying a degree in Design in the University of Barcelona but this semester I’m doing an Erasmus exchange in the University of the West of England. Here I’m studying Graphic Design and in my module I’ve chosen the Moving Image pathway. I’m pretty sure that my Erasmus has been one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had.

When I arrived to England I was really afraid: I thought that my level of English wasn’t good enough, I didn’t know if I could live without seeing the sun for a few weeks and I needed to find a room in a week. Initially I had a really bad time, I was very stressed, I had to get used to many new things and I really missed my family and friends. But day-by-day, everything became better. I started to enjoy my new university, I found a share house with really nice housemates (most of them were studying the same as me) and thankfully my level of English was improving incredibly quickly.

My first impression about UWE was that it was huge, with a lot of corridors and I thought that every time that I wanted to go somewhere I would get lost. My first class was also a disaster, I made a big effort to understand my professor but when the rest of my classmates started to talk to each other I couldn’t understand anything. However, I talked with Kate, my professor, and she was extremely nice with me and she tried to help me as well as she could. And as always, after a few weeks I could understand almost everything. From this moment, I enjoyed all of my classes because they were really interesting. I did a lot of new projects and I had the equipment and the knowledge to do as many things as I could imagine. However, time-management for a student is a big issue, but I’ve tried to do it my best and learn as much as I could.

In my module, I did four different workshops: Go Pro Cameras, Adobe Premiere Pro, Arduino and Adobe After Effects. They were really useful for me, the lecturers explained the software very well and I could use them in my projects. Besides the workshops that I must did for my module, I also did one workshop in 3D Printing. It was absolutely amazing and I was really impressed with this new technology. You could imagine an object, draw it with a special software and just printed it with these amazing printers. In a few minutes you could have the actual object.

In my home university, in Barcelona, apart from study Graphic Design I have also studied Product and Industrial Design. So I’m used to have more technical classes, as technical drawing, anthropometry, materials science or AutoCAD classes among others. For each class we had a different lecturer and here in UWE I had a functional tutor for the module, so it was really helpful. Besides, I think that in my home university we don’t have as good equipment as in Bower Ashton and I feel that in UWE I have more freedom to experiment and figure out what I want to do in the future.

It had also been a pleasure to be a UWE student, I really like the University, all the lecturers that I had and, in particular, Kate my tutor. Everybody was really nice and they tried to do everything easier to me. And of course, I also enjoyed meeting my new classmates and the rest of the Erasmus and the International students.

It’s a shame that I only have one more month to be a UWE student; I’m really used to be in Bristol now. Although it’s obvious that I miss my family and friends and I would like to see them everyday. However I’m trying to find a job because I want to stay here for the summer, until the start of my classes in Barcelona.

In conclusion, I’m really happy that I have chosen Bristol to do my Erasmus and I hope that when I’m older I can come back and remember all the good moments that I’ve had.